THE FIFTH BEATITUDE seems to offer some more
straightforward "boot-strap religion." Virtue appears to be its own reward.
If we are kind and forgiving toward other people, they
 together with Providence
 will be favorably disposed toward us. The way we treat those
around us conditions the kind of clemency we receive, not only from our
neighbors, but from God Himself. The Golden Rule (or a misunderstanding of
it) is thus projected into outer space by a kind of celestial stimulus-response
or push-button formula. If our welldoing measures up in quality, God presumably
can be "triggered" into an appropriate response. Another well-known verse
is often cited to underscore the point: "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive
our debtors," to which is added our Lord's comment, "For if you forgive men
their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you" (Matthew
6:12,14).

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We are seeking to interpret
the Beatitudes by the Cross. We are seeking the person behind the teachings,
believing that in these verses portraying the blessed man, Jesus Himself
is the character described. Or as Carl Henry has interpreted it, "He clothes
the Beatitudes with his own
life."1

Jesus' life, we know, derives
its full meaning from the Cross. How does the Cross bear out the
"stimulus-response" interpretation of the fifth Beatitude? We may begin by
saying that Jesus of Nazareth was one who practiced mercy daily. "All they
that had any sick . . . brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every
one of them, and healed them" (Luke 4:40). Compassion was the essence of
His character. It led Him to frequent unsavory places and to touch the
untouchable. It gave Him a special concern for the weak; for children, for
the handicapped, for the misfits and victims of society. He refused to
countenance violence or bloodshed on His behalf. Even on the Roman gallows,
as the reformer Zwingli has said, our Lord was "true to Himself" and forgave
those who sought to do away with Him. Yet when the sentence of man was passed
upon Him, He received no clemency. His reward was neither acquittal nor pardon
but execution, and there was no interference.

Here is the one stark fact about
the crucifixion of Christ that stands out above all others: from every
human

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point of view it was merciless. It was brought
about by the two cruelest forces of the ancient world: imperial might and
religious fanaticism. Roman law was inexorable. Its justice was cruel and
final. The empire that systematically enslaved sixty million people was in
no mood to trifle with a man who, according to his own tribe, claimed to
be a rival of Caesar. As for the religious bigots of the time, they (like
their counterparts today of whatever persuasion) showed a supreme inability
to sympathize with or understand someone of differing views. Thus the merciful
one obtained no mercy.

We are forced to go back to
our Beatitude and ask, "What does it mean?" Obviously it does not mean, "Do
this and you'll get that." In the storm and stress of life no sheltered island
is promised where the faithful will be rewarded. A dedicated Christian friend
once said in my presence, "I believe that as long as I am taking care of
my orphans, the Lord will take care of me." We can admire and love him for
his compassionate heart; but what will he do with the Cross? For the Cross
makes it clear that the way God takes care of us may be altogether different
from the way we reward (or fail to reward) each other. If we are decent and
loving to each other, we may reap thanks in this life and we may not. We
may die full of years like Father Abraham and we may not. Life hands us no
gilt-edged warranty that rectitude wins "the big payoff." If we look to Jesus
Christ, He does not pin a "good-conduct" medal on our chests; He hands us
a Cross.

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* * * * *
* *

"The quality of mercy," says
Portia, "is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven." The
Shakespearean figure is valid and Scriptural. It corrects the fallacy that
mercy can be conjured up on earth out of a bottle or a good-will sack. Christian
faith teaches that mercy does not go up that it may come down; it comes down
period. It is unmerited favor from God himself to an erring people
who can do nothing to earn it except to hold out their
hands.

When we understand that mercy
follows the line of vertical descent, the fog layers of our confusion begin
to burn off. There is no stimulus-response, we discover; there is no bargaining
for divine favor. To make a bargain one must have something to bargain with;
and if we had anything to bargain with we would not need mercy. Our repentance
is no asset, for it is the liquidation of all assets. "And if by grace, then
it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace" (Romans 11:6).
There is no "triggering" here, for God's mercy belongs to Himself and He
exercises Crown rights over what is His own. We can plead and beg for mercy,
but you will note that the Beatitude does not suggest we shall necessarily
receive it.

What, then? Having eliminated
from our quest all human impulses, prayers, sympathies, pityings, generosities,
deeds, penances, sacrifices, almsgiving, self-interest, props, crutches and
derring-do; having seen that none of these have any claim on the mercy of
the Lord; having

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ascribed absolute sovereignty to God in all
these matters as the sole fount of Grace, what are we to do next? What further
conditions need to be fulfilled?

Let us see what the New Testament
means by mercy. The word is not a synonym for charity or even for pity in
its ordinary usage. Mercy is primarily the gracious act of God in dealing
with men: not after their just deserts, but by releasing them, pardoning
them, setting them free from the just penalty of their
wrongdoings.

Mercy does not set aside justice
or belittle justice. The Word of God is terrible in its promise of recompense:
"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!" Mercy does not minimize
the offense of the Cross. "If I were God," cried Martin Luther, "and the
world had treated me as it has treated Him, I would kick the wretched thing
to pieces." Yet so unspeakable is the love of God that He took the penalty
of our sin upon Himself, that mercy might "rejoice" over judgment (James
2:13), and the stain upon men's lives might be wiped
away.

Today the earth and the skies
are filled with signs that suggest not the mercy of God but rather impending
doom. The race for space is just another indication that the Lord is inexorable
in His judgments upon sin, and "the way of the ungodly shall perish." It
is a time when men's hearts are failing them for fear; when the imagination
shrinks at the portents of the future. What should the Christian do? Should
he raise children, vote for school bonds, build his church and try to live
a decent life,

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when the Lord seems about to permit him to
blast himself off the planet?

To know God is to know the answer.
As the Scripture says, He is slow to anger, kind, patient, compassionate,
ready to pardon, eager to impart to us the gift of Life. At the Cross love
triumphed over justice in the heart of our heavenly Father, and every condition
was fulfilled that was required to set men free from the power that thwarts
their lives. You and I may hold back with our doubts; we may hesitate to
accept God's offer of pardon and peace; but there is no straining the quality
of God's mercy. All He requires is our brokenness.

To walk in that mercy is to
know freedom from worry about the future, for the future lies with God. It
is to know freedom from worry about the present, because each day is a walk
in fellowship with our Lord. And it is to know freedom from worry about the
past, because "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all
sin."

* * * * *
* *

What is a merciful man? The
New Testament's answer is that he is first of all mercy-full. He is filled
with the mercy of God, and in that state he is emptied of everything else,
or the term means nothing. We quickly recognize that the ordinary meaning
of the term "merciful" today is hardly "mercy-full," any more than "graceful"
suggests in common usage "filled with the Grace of God." Yet let us reflect
a moment: mercy, we

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said, descends from heaven as a prime attribute
of God. How then can we speak of a merciful person without suggesting the
fullness of God in him?

The quintessence of mercy lies
in its moving beyond the nicely calculated judgments that regulate our human
relationships. It transcends the strictures of justice. Perhaps a very earthy
incident will illustrate the operation of free mercy in the Kingdom of God.
The municipality of Richmond, California, maintains a carefully-worked-out
system of traffic ordinances, with fines graded according to the seriousness
of the offense. Not long ago I was stopped by a servant of that city and
charged with a violation involving a fine of some twenty-seven dollars. When
court convened I entered a plea of "guilty." Apart from explaining that the
act was "unintentional," I made no effort to defend myself. The judge,
surprisingly, set aside the hierarchy of penalties and proceeded to administer
not justice but mercy. I walked out of the courtroom a defenseless violator
of the law, stripped of every "extenuating circumstance" and disarmed of
every rationalization, yet pardoned and filled with
mercy.

Until a man has encountered
the living Lord in some such way he cannot know the meaning of the word
"merciful."

Just as I am, without one plea,But that thy blood was shed for me,And that thou bidd'st me come to thee . . .
.

To be merciful is to be filled
with God. The eyes of compassion are no human eyes. When we look
feelingly

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upon our brother in need, it is not our own
feelings that affect us; our own feelings are quite "unfeeling." In the battle
for survival it is "every man for himself" and we are quite "merciless."
God pity us; we even take secret enjoyment in other people's discomfiture.
When we look upon our brother in mercy, it is the Lord who looks and feels
and makes use of us as His instruments, "For it is God who works in you both
to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). Writing to a
mother who had lost her child, Baron von
Hügel
declared, "It is He who made the mother's heart; it is not simply her love,
but in the first instance His love, with just some drops of it fallen into
the mother's heart . . ."2 Since God is the author
of all mercy, every cup of cold water is really given in the name of Jesus,
although only those who are in the beloved can understand the
reward.

Once on a by-street in Hilo,
Hawaii, I witnessed a strange sight that has haunted me ever since. It was
a trial conducted by a flock of mynah birds. In the center of the street
one forlorn bird had alighted, and in a surrounding circle several feet in
diameter were fifteen or twenty of its "peers." The trial consisted of shrieking
and chattering and hopping up and down. At the conclusion of the deliberations
the jury pounced upon the bird in the center and pecked it to death with
long, sharp beaks. Then court was adjourned and all flew into nearby trees.
Shocked at this disturbance in nature, I went over and removed the
body.

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More than once since then I
have seen men behave in ways that reminded me of a mynah-bird trial. Justice
that is not tempered with mercy is perpetually in danger of becoming "mynah-bird
justice."

Speaking vertically, with reference
to God, no one of us can make any pretensions in the realm of mercy. We are
all mynah birds at heart. We are disqualified by our very natures. We cannot
administer what we do not have. Only God can make us merciful; only God is
unfailing in pity and tenderness; only "his mercy endureth forever." And
so great was God's love toward us that He disregarded our shortcomings, failures,
and missing of the mark, and sent us a clean bill of health. He published
His amnesty and established His fount of mercy on the most unlikely spot
on the face of the earth: the Golgotha execution grounds. It was there, where
murder was officially condoned by mankind in the name of religion and law,
where imperial justice and ecclesiastical scruple had smothered every spark
of human pity, that we received eternal pardon and
grace.

No wonder men have been confused
by the Cross! For amid all the "mynah-bird" passions at the Place of the
Skull, the believing Christian has found nothing but love  love 
love, and mercy surpassing all earthly thoughts and deeds. The bloodstained
beams have become the precious and beautiful symbol of salvation. The whole
sordid, rubbish-littered scene of Calvary has been forever transfixed with
the ineffable glory of God.

Mercy there was great, and grace was
free,

Pardon there was multiplied to
me,

There my burdened soul found
liberty,

At Calvary.

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* * * * *
* *

This Beatitude offers us a chance
to re-examine some of the sore points in our personal lives. Perhaps we think
we have treated our neighbor justly, but have we been merciful? The merciful
man is the magnanimous man. He "overlooks" the wrongs that have been done
him, just as God, in the words of Paul, "passed over" our former sins (Romans
3:25). That is, the Christian hands out horizontally toward his fellow what
he has received vertically from the Lord.

There are seasons when Christians
are invited to make a special gift to the One Great Hour of Sharing or similar
charity for the relief of the world's suffering. In our self-inventory today
we are asking whether such generosity is merely applying salve to our sore
consciences. It may be a different story when we are asked to be men of mercy
to the Jew or the devout Roman Catholic or the man of different skin alongside
us, or to the rather obnoxious alcoholic across the street, or even to the
person living under the same roof with us. "You have to do a lot of business
with God," says Edward John Carnell, "to mellow out in sweetness." Yet in
parable after parable Jesus Christ identifies Himself with just such folk
as "these my brethren."

Even if we have the good will
to be merciful, and we sincerely want to be used of God as instruments of
His grace, we do not always know how to proceed. Should we "tell off" a
person

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for his own good? Is it not more merciful
in some cases to be polite and tactful, and to skip the facts? Does a man
achieve more under a "hard-boiled" boss than under one who is gentle and
"merciful"? Could there be a situation in which it would be kind to be harsh,
and unkind to be kind?

Ernest Ligon, the child
psychologist, suggests, "Mercy does not always express itself by withholding
punishment. For one child punishment may be necessary, in another it may
produce a sullen, spiritless, and anti-social personality. Permitting a youth
to work his way through college may develop a sense of responsibility in
one student, produce an overmaterialistic, money-grabbing philosophy of life
in another, and an inferiority complex in a
third."3

If it takes wisdom to establish
justice, it takes even more to have mercy; in fact, it takes more than man
possesses. Without the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Christian hardly knows
how to begin to act. The making of merciful men is a divine art. If there
is any one rule that can be given, it is, "Follow Jesus
Christ."

A friend of mine recently returned
from a trip to South America where he investigated the state of the Church.
Everywhere he went he discovered that the Pentecostal movement is making
strides, and he inquired of the nationals and missionaries he met the reason
for their advance. They told him, "The Pentecostals are accepted because
they believe that Jesus has the answer to every
problem."

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Certainly in the matter of mercy we can trust
Jesus. He was not soft as mush, He was hard as steel. The sternest words
in the Bible are not found in the Old Testament, they are found on the lips
of Jesus; yet His life was a symphony of mercy.

He teaches us that the merciful
man is the one who seeks to save others from suffering, even at the cost
of immediate pain, and even if it means vicarious suffering on his own part.
From Jesus we gather that the merciful man does not seek to improve his own
status at the expense of the misery of his fellow. He leaves practical jokes
to others. He has a compassionate heart. he goes the second mile. He brushes
off the slights and buffets that come his way as of little consequence. In
all these things he anticipates no reward, but simply conforms in obedience
to the pattern of his Master.

In the tabernacle of the ancient
Hebrews the center of worship was the Mercy Seat, over which brooded the
cherubim with wings outstretched above the Ark of the Covenant. When the
veil of the temple was torn in two at the time of the Crucifixion, Jesus
Christ became our Mercy Seat. It is from that Seat that our Lord creates
the man of mercy. He does not promise such a man that he shall have
"self-fulfillment" as our culture understands it, or even that he shall be
"happy," as some translators interpret the first word of our
Beatitude.

Nevertheless Jesus Christ does
promise a blessing and it is this: open access to all the riches of heaven.
To "obtain mercy" is not only to receive a passport to immortality; it is
to unlock the door to life's greatest mystery

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and its most elusive, guarded secret. What
the artist dreams of in her cubes and abstractions, what the alchemist searched
for in his magic elixir, what the manager pursues in her disappearing "plateau"
of success is what the Lord Jesus Christ issues as standard equipment for
those who are His own: peace with joy in the borrowed dimensions of
mercy.

* * * * *
* *

To read the New Testament is
to realize that we are not just saved from something but for
something. God's purpose in accomplishing our salvation was, after all,
to make us useful to Himself. We are newly "created in Christ Jesus unto
good works"; and those works are, broadly speaking, works of mercy. By now
it should be evident that our Beatitude is not so much a statement of cause
and effect as it is an equation. It could be equally well stated in reverse:
"Blessed are they that obtain mercy: for they shall be merciful." Our Lord
said something very much like it in Luke's account of the Sermon on the Plain:
"Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful" (Luke
6:36).

The same kind of equation is
evident in the verse, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."
It is not simply cause and effect ("If ye forgive men their trespasses, your
heavenly Father will also forgive you"), for it also works in reverse: "Be
ye kind . . . forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
you" (Ephesians 4:32). The whole earth is filled with

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the mercy of God. We love our fellow human
beings because He first loved us (1 John 4:19), but we also love them in
order that we might love God better (1 John 4:20). Our works of mercy do
not earn our fare to heaven, they are simply the staple diet of the Christian
life. As the practical proverb puts it, "The merciful man doeth good to his
own soul" (Proverbs 11:17).

The world desperately needs
to learn that Jesus went to the Cross to create a race of new men 
merciful men. It needs these men, for our human race is perishing for lack
of love and mercy. We may have thought once that we were outgrowing the cruelties
of the ancients and the "barbarians," but we have been rudely awakened. The
latest revolution in Cuba employed the same brutal tortures that were used
in primeval Egypt and Phoenicia. God is weary of our inhumanities. He is
looking for this new race to assert itself: men who will take Jesus Christ
seriously, men of mercy who are willing to make the same kind of absolute
sacrifice in His name and in our time. Such men He will use
mightily.

A debate is being waged around
the world today over the words "justice" and "democracy." Our nation is committed
to its hard-won convictions; we will part with them dearly indeed. However,
in other parts of the world we are told that our democracy is not pure, and
that our freedom is not freedom at all. Many of our difficulties are semantic.
There is tremendous confusion simply over words.

It is not so with regard to
mercy. Its meaning is changeless. There is no mistaking the cry of a
ragged,

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starving child, or the timid handclasp of
the friendless and downtrodden. Need speaks a universal language and hunger
knows no iron curtain. We never seem to run out of the demands of mercy,
for the tyrant is always at hand, and no immigration statutes seem to keep
out the oppressor of the poor. The beggars with their sores were pitiful
in Jesus' day, but the suffering and homelessness of thousands and even millions
in our time are more poignant because our nations possess the technical ability
to relieve the condition.

There is indescribable poverty
in this year of Grace in Korea, in Hong Kong, in Jordan, in India, in Africa,
but we need not go so far afield. Within a dozen miles of where you live
there is destitution that you never suspected was there. Visit a city rescue
mission and let life speak to you.

John R. Mott once described
the call of God in a man's life as "the recognition of a need and the capacity
to meet that need." We who go by the name of Christ and who see the need
have a task that is herculean. We dwell in a century which, whatever else
it may be called, will never be known as the "Century of Mercy." Its latest
tragic development is the emergence of Communist "assistance to backward
nations." The merciless are now simulating mercy, not out of love for the
brethren but in order to propagandize an appeal for world
domination.

Our Western leaders are being
told that they must quickly extend a helping hand to the world's wretched
or fall before the power of a dictatorship. Frank Laubach
says,

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"The United States must make an all-out effort
to help the destitute half of the world out of its misery, or we shall find
that the world has gone Communist because of our neglect." His entreaty is
based on absolute truth, but it will be ignored. Fear has never yet begotten
mercy and kindness. Only Christians who know the perfect love that casts
out fear can act with what Samuel Hopkins called "disinterested benevolence."
With the New Testament as their guide, they must take the lead in teaching
the world the sincere brotherly concern and humanity that is the stamp of
the Savior on a man's life.

Our Beatitude is more than an
equation; it is an intersection, a meeting of the vertical with the horizontal.
That mercy which "drops as a gentle rain from heaven" covers the earth with
streams of living water. The free Grace of God becomes a human commodity,
not for profit but for blessing in the everyday encounters of life. The very
things which, we said earlier, could not incite the mercy of God toward us
become the vehicles whereby we are to express God's love and compassion:
our sympathies, pityings, generosities, deeds, sacrifices, and charity. The
divine forgiveness, by which we are "accepted in the beloved," is mediated
through us as a means of reconciling man with man.